Hello eIreland,
Last weekend in Bucharest, Romania, eRepublik had their official 2012 summit. eRep players from around the world gathered to discuss the future of the game, to voice their opinions on how to improve the game experience, and see first hand what Plato has in store.

eRep Summit 2012 conference room in Bucharest, Romania.

Upcoming Changes
The first part of the meeting introduced two planned changes to the game: the introduction of an improved game map, and the introduction of player vs. player in battles.

New planned map.

The new map seen above will be more detailed than the current one, allowing us to drill down into regions and battles. The map is also being changed to become a tool rather than just flash, and it should hopefully be a faster and more reliable map than before. The Admin has said that they plan to launch even more new features from this map, so this may be a glimpse into significant change. With the addition of more detailed information, the world map will likely become more important to strategy and gameplay than ever before. You can clearly see that it’s a more attractive, and more detailed map.

Monitor showing the player vs. player option.

The player vs. player module is supposedly relatively simple. It sounds like it's going to be similar to the recently added easter egg where you fight Plato, Lana, and The Headless Chicken. That may even have been done to test/introduce us to the idea, although it seems that these PvPs will be optional... The battles will be live and will give you the opportunity to truly test yourself against international rivals and super tanks.

What Was Discussed?
After showing off plans for the new map and player vs. player, the eRepublik hosts turned the meeting to discussion between the game designers and the guests. A lot was talked about but I'll go over the more interesting points here:

Military Unit Structure - There was a lot of discussion about the current Military Unit system of electing Captains once a month. In many eCountries this feature is a problem because it allows for fairly easy political takeovers of divisions. This is an easy way for unscrupulous hostiles to impair a whole nations ability to direct damage. The suggestion, and seeming consensus, of the Summit was to change this so that captains are appointed by the commander of the unit.

Alliances In Game – The Admin were receptive to the idea of actually incorporating alliances into the game somehow. Ideas included automatic alliance MPPs, alliance laws from presidents to congress, alliance HQs setting campaign or battle orders to each countries, and automatic goods distributions and communal alliance storage. We have seen the admin acknowledge alliances in game before, but this will be the first time we see them fully incorporated into the mechanics.

Return of Organizations – There was a lot of support for bringing back orgs in some way shape or form. The point was made that this feature has really been missed by many players. We know that the eRep developers took this information down onto their Military list of notes, so we can infer that they’re thinking of doing this with MUs somehow. This could manifest in MUs having their own factories, storage, and resource allocation systems, for example. The main features of orgs that have been missed is the ability for groups to be represented by communal newspapers and share responsibility and access to companies and goods – of course these features came with risks and an opportunity to be abused, so hopefully any new versions would be more finely tuned.

Allocation Controls - There was basically talk of adding automatic distribution rules that would allow the national government to send goods to MUs that follow orders automatically.

Mass Communications - It was suggested that the ability to mass private message be made available to certain positions like the president (for the nation), a commander (for their MU), or a party president (to their party). This would make it easier to communicate important messages to gigantic communities. We can group the idea of bringing back election campaigns and ads with this topic.

Division Adjustments - Game developers at the summit agreed that it may be time to adjust the division boundaries somehow , since a large number of players continue to funnel into Division 4. The admin confirmed that the calibration of divisions was already on their to do list.

Economy Module – This was brought up, but it’s clear that it’s a difficult issue to solve since the Economy Module is so closely tied into the Military Module. You’d really need to design the game around the economy module, and not the other way around. The issue of division three and lower players not building their lands was brought up, and the official response was that helping and developing new players was an element of the game for individual countries to deal with, not necessarily for the admin to meddle with. It was suggested that resources be somehow adjusted to alleviate the difficulties faced by business owners all around the New World. One way or another, balancing the economy module is a priority.

That’s a basic cover of the issues discussed, if you can think of any others just let me know in the comments and I’ll add them.

They also had a party for eRepublik's 5th birthday, which you can read more about in Plato's paper below.

International Summit Articles
Here's a look at other articles on this subject from around the New World.

Send me any other articles that you know of and I'll add them to the list.

Conclusion
I think overall some good things are on the way, and the summit was a constructive exercise. We’ve been through a lot of changes, and we’ll make it through a few more for better or for worse. Brace yourselves for these changes, and think critically about how some of these might affect the monetary market, politics, our damage on the field, and the way we run things here in eIreland.

You are reading an article written by a citizen of eRepublik, an immersive multiplayer strategy game based on real life countries. Create your own character and help your country achieve its glory while establishing yourself as a war hero, renowned publisher or finance guru.